Making war

AUBURN – The simulated gunfire erupted as soon as the lead truck halted.

Soldiers emerged from behind trees and sandy berms, firing blanks from their M-16 rifles. Several hundred yards away, on the other side of this pretend desert, a 50-caliber rifle boomed. And more soldiers emerged from their cover, carrying water balloons meant to represent grenades.

Here, on a sandy plain in Auburn, the men and women of Charlie Company of the Maine Army National Guard re-enacted the scenarios of Iraq.

The company training, from the Guard’s 133rd Engineer Battalion, is part of a statewide effort aimed at using the techniques learned from first-hand war knowledge to prepare soldiers for a possible return.

As many as 30 percent of the company’s 100-plus soldiers have joined since the unit returned home in March 2005. For them, it was an opportunity to learn techniques the veterans acquired on the job in cities like Mosul and Tikrit.

For the veterans, it was a refresher.

“It all comes back,” said Brian Bolduc, 22, of Auburn.

In Iraq, he’d worked as a fuel handler, often driving gasoline trucks in convoys.

During Friday’s exercises, he manned the lead truck, driving slowly and pointing his M-16 out of the window, a routine show of force among American-run convoys.

He drove until he saw an ammunition box in his path with a claymore mine attached to the top. For this exercise, the unarmed mine acted as a stand-in for the roadside bombs that have been so numerous and deadly in Iraq.

Bolduc stopped his truck about 30 feet shy of the mine and the gunfire began.

It was the first time since Iraq that Bolduc and the others had participated in such an attack.

It went on for about a minute. Then everyone, the good guys and the bad guys, ceased fire, gathered in a circle and began talking about what happened.

Lt. Scott Lewis, who’d been watching, ran the briefing.

He congratulated the dozen or so soldiers, all veterans of Iraq, for responding well to the attack. But there were problems.

One of the soldiers had jumped into the fray from the wrong side of the truck, “right into the kill zone,” Lewis said.

And had there been any casualties, no one had determined before they left which vehicle might become an ambulance.

It’s the kind of thing that gets left out when a unit is rushed into a mission, as they so often were in Iraq, Lewis said.

Lewis, who designed the drill with Staff Sgt. Jonathan Boubel, said he intended to push his leaders.

As much as the individual soldiers would learn or relearn techniques, his leaders would be tested for their ability to make snap decisions.

“It happened all the time in Iraq,” Lewis said. “You never had the time you wanted.”

In Iraq, the unit had exceeded all expectations, earning the Meritorious Unit Award. Though the battalionwide award was announced last year, the presentation is planned on Sunday, the last day of its weekend-long drill.